


Wrap Up Your Questions, Keep Them Down

by verbaepulchellae



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon fic, F/M, Future Fic, love is the key, season 3 finale speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6634753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a war raging in Polis. The tower is on fire, flames licking at the already crumbling infrastructure and down in the Flame Keeper’s quarters, the boom of collapsing buildings and screams of gutted people echo. Clarke looks up at Bellamy, eyes terrified but resigned. “I have to do this,” she whispers.</p><p>Season 3 finale speculative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrap Up Your Questions, Keep Them Down

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the most lovely @thelovelylights on tumblr, who asked me to write out a fic about my season 3 finale speculation.

There is a war raging in Polis. The tower is on fire, flames licking at the already crumbling infrastructure and down in the Flame Keeper’s quarters, the boom of collapsing buildings and screams of gutted people echo. Clarke looks up at Bellamy, eyes terrified but resigned. “I have to do this,” she whispers.

Bellamy shakes his head even though he knows she’s right. Raven looks up from the floor where she’s crouched over Monty, gone to the City of Light to find his Mom. “Clarke, we have to do this now.” Raven’s fingers grip knuckle white in the shoulder of Jasper’s shirt. Jasper, who after months of punishing his best friend, followed Monty in to try to save him.

“Yeah. Alright,” Clarke says, nodding her head in rapid little bobs, and Bellamy sees her steel herself. She looks up at Bellamy again. “I have to do this. For our people. I have to save them, Bellamy.”

“I know,” Bellamy says, ragged, half lifts his hand to touch her but can’t bring himself to. He wants to make her promise to come back, but he can’t form the words. Instead he says, “Why is it always us, Clarke?”

Clarke laughs a little, desperate and lost but giving Bellamy that sad little smile he’s come to desperately rely on. “I don’t know. Maybe after this, we’ll get a break.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, chokes back everything he wants to tell Clarke because he can’t burden her with that now. “I’ll be here, ok?”

“Ok.” Clarke says, and then leans in and rests her forehead against his shoulder, too quick for Bellamy to wrap his arms around her, takes a shaky breath and then steps back. “See you soon.” She flashes him a smile and then goes to Raven. “I’m ready.”

Bellamy goes on autopilot. His last glimpse of Clarke had been her stretched out on the floor next to Monty and Jasper, skin already going paler than Bellamy can stand to see. His gun is in his hands, Miller is next to him and they will not let anyone get past the doors.

He kills. Miller kills. Harper, from her perch on the rooftop across the street, kills. He can only trust that wherever Octavia and Indra and Kane and Abby are, they’re alive and still fighting. He doesn’t know how long it goes on, how many blank eyed people he guns down because he has to. He can’t think about that now. Can’t let his mind stray back to Clarke and Monty and Jasper on the cold, stone floor.

His world becomes steel and blood and clinging to the desperate conviction that he is doing the right thing for his people. And just when it seems like that’s all it’s ever going to be, the two women coming at him with stones and bricks clasped in their hands, programed to attack with anything they possibly can, freeze. Bellamy holds up his hand quick and Miller hesitates next to him. Both of the women don’t move for a long moment and then they fall, shuddering, to the ground, convulse and then go still. A sudden, ringing silence echoes through Polis, and Bellamy lowers his gun.

“Wait here,” he says gruffly to Miller and cautiously approaches one of the women. She’s young, looks barely older than Octavia and he crouches over her, prepared to leap back, prepared to kill her if he has to. Her eyes are closed but when he touches her neck to feel for a pulse, he finds a faint one and the girl stirs, opens her eyes. She looks up at Bellamy, confusion and terror bright in her dark eyes.

“Where am I?” she whispers.

“Polis. You’re safe now. It’s ok,” Bellamy tells her, heart beating rapidly in his chest. “You’re ok. Miller! Harper!” he calls as he helps the girl sit up and the other woman begins to stir. “Come help.”

Miller’s next to him in an instant, taking the weight of the girl from Bellamy’s hands. “I got this,” Miller says to him, Harper dropping to the street next to them and crouching next to the other woman, speaking softly to her. “Go.”

Bellamy’s on his feet, pounding back down the stairs and bursting through the door to the chamber. Raven looks up at him, tears on her face. But she’s smiling. Jasper is sitting up next to her, looking around and nodding slowly, Monty is still on his back, but his eyes are open, staring at the ceiling with tear tracks on his cheeks, clasping Jasper’s hand like a lifeline.And Clarke…

Clarke hasn’t opened her eyes. Bellamy’s chest goes cold. “Why isn’t she…? Raven, where’s Clarke.” Raven looks down at her friend and her smile freezes on her face.

“Clarke?” Raven says, shaking Clarke’s shoulder. “Clarke, wake up.”

Bellamy drops down next to her, fights the panic rising in his chest. “Clarke,” he says gruffly. “Clarke, wake up.”

Jasper and Monty hover, concerned but giving Bellamy and Raven space to work. “Raven,” he says, harsh. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Raven says. “The program is supposed to allow anyone still alive to come home when ALIEs program is hacked. She should be back by now.”

Jasper shifts restlessly behind him, takes a breath, “What?” Bellamy snaps, shakes his head. “What, Jasper?”

“Clarke said… I saw her, just for a moment. She was… Bellamy, for a moment she looked happy.”

Bellamy closes his eyes and swallows down the nausea rising in his throat. There’s a clatter on the stairs and Miller and Harper come tumbling in, crow at the sight of Jasper and Monty and then go silent as they catch sight of Clarke.

“She has to… she said she’d see us soon,” Bellamy says to Raven. “She wouldn’t stay.” But Bellamy doubts the words even as he speaks them. Thinks of Clarke’s sad smiles, the crease that’s nearly become a permanent fixture in her brow. She might stay. If she was happy there, she might stay.

“No,” Bellamy says, shaking his head again, reaching out to touch the blonde hair that’s fanned around Clarke’s face. “No, come on, Clarke. You’re needed here. Please.”

When he strokes down her neck, Clarke’s pulse is faint, soft as an echo under his fingers. “Oh, Clarke no,” Bellamy says, choking. “Raven, what do we do?”

“Love,” Monty says, very quietly, crouching down next to Bellamy. “Bellamy, love is the key.”

“How…?” Bellamy starts, looking at Monty, lost. “Monty, what do I do?”

“I’ve never seen you give up on Clarke before,” Monty says softly. “I saw you in the woods, Bellamy. If anyone can bring her back, Bellamy, it’s you.”

“What if she doesn’t want to?” Bellamy whispers, can’t meet his friends’ eyes, can’t see their pity and their pain. He touches Clarke’s cheek instead, watches his thumb smooth across her skin. “What if she won’t come back?”

“She won’t if you don’t try,” Monty says and grips Bellamy’s shoulder. “You have to try, Bellamy.”

Bellamy takes a slow breath. “Ok, alright.” He glances at Monty again. “Can I…?” Monty nods and steps back, touches Raven’s shoulder and she understands, stands as his friends step back, give Bellamy space to collect his thoughts.

“Ok,” Bellamy says and carefully scoops his hand under Clarke’s neck, supports her head as he lifts her to cradle her in the crook of his arm. God, she’s so pale, Bellamy has to fight against the fear that she’s already gone. But she’s still breathing, still a soft rise and fall to her chest. “Ok, Clarke, come on.”

He falters and takes a desperate breath against her hair as he holds her close to him, tries not to think that this might be the last time he’ll get to. He can’t imagine never getting to tell Clarke all the things he tucked away in the back of his mind while she was gone. Things he thought would make her laugh or smile; things that would spark that look in her eye she sometimes gives him, the one that reminds him that at the end of the day, Clarke is just a girl, just as prone to the spark that has pulsed between them for what seems like forever at this point.

He’s always had words before, whenever he needed them, but here, teetering on the brink of losing the girl who has always managed to inspire those words toward something greater than himself, they seem to fail him. All that comes to him are the desperate ones he’s already offered her, ones she’s twice rejected. He doesn’t know if he can ask her again, doesn’t know if he can stand her refusing. But he has to.

“Clarke, we need you, ok? We need you here,” he whispers it into her hair, tries to keep his voice from shaking too much. “Things are going to get better, I’m going to make them better, I promise you. Just… come home, Clarke. Please, come back to us. Come back to me. I can’t lose you, not again. Clarke, I can’t… Please, come home, Clarke.”

The moment stretches, and then Clarke gasps, coughing and jerking in his arms, and comes awake.

It’s sudden and violent and there are tears pouring from her eyes, sobs wracking her body as Clarke grabs at his jacket and buries her face in his neck. “Bellamy,” she manages to pant through her tears, “Oh god, Bellamy.”

“I’ve got you,” he says, relief washing over him and he’s trembling as he holds her close, let’s her shake apart in his arms. He glances up at his friends, huddled by the door, and Raven has tear tracks down her face but smiling brighter than he’s seen her in a long time, and Jasper and Monty look devastatingly relieved. Bellamy presses his cheek against the top of Clarke’s head and rubs her arm gently.

“You came back,” Bellamy whispers, pulling Clarke closer, just to feel her feebly grip at his jacket, feel her take gasping breaths against his neck, tears hot and wet on his skin. “You came back.”

Clarke nods against him, pulls back just enough so that she can peer up at him. And even though they’re in Polis, miles from the Dropship, miles from Arkadia, and life times away from the Ark, Clarke whispers, “I came home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always appreciated


End file.
